


Welcome Home

by pretive



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Danfic, Death, M/M, Phan - Freeform, Phandom - Freeform, Sad, epidemic, post apocolyptic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-01 23:31:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6541225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pretive/pseuds/pretive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Infection that destroyed many lives, Dan is going back home to London to the apartment when the epidemic started, and now after the finish. Dan's seen so much in a year, and one of those things is his friend dying from the Infection. Reminiscing hurts, but it's closure as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome Home

**Author's Note:**

> Another Phan(sort of)! I know, I know, I'm obsessed. This is a (edit-POST APOCALYPTIC) Danfic, but there are references of a past relationship with Phil. (Oh, and btw 300 {on CSNC} READS IN A FUCKING DAY? I LOVE YOU ALL.)

Dan hugs the jacket closer to himself, sick of London weather already after the epidemic sent him to America. It’s freezing under the shadows of the city buildings, but after all that life had sent him through in the past year, he was glad-to a certain extent- to be home. 

He’s got three places he needs to go before April, three days away; home, Manchester, and back to his old house he grew up in- the house of hell he planned on burning to the ground. For each stop he’d take the epidemic shuttle that they’d been sent with, and they’d fly back to headquarters in Tokyo until they got their ranks for London housing.

Dan knows Zoe is eyeing him closely, afraid that he’d receive a flashback and hurt himself- again, but he’s not stirred about it at all. He’d be fine, probably a bit shaken afterwards- but fine.

She herself lost everything too- her brother, parents, boyfriend, and best friend, Louise. Dan lost Phil, and that was enough to put him under special watch for suicide- the next highest epidemic taking the world’s population. 

Dan lost Phil the first night- he was too far gone, and it killed him to hear the epidemic team shoot him down. He told Dan he loved him for the first time, and that made it ten times harder to leave. Dan still had nightmares about the hissing, raw sounds and the banging on his locked door that sheltered him from the man he loved most. 

Dan quickly tracked down Louise, Joe, Caspar, Zoe, Alfie, two of which were traveling for a vacation. Some vacation. Louise and Joe were infected, but they didn’t begin developing until after they turned themselves in for research, and Alfie was attacked. Caspar leads the messaging team now with Cat, who lost her brother and aunt.

Dan sees the apartment door, and he smiles briefly, knowing that the door was locked for only him to open- he wouldn't have to worry about stray Infects, the city had been sprayed and checked. 

The key is heavy in his pocket as he approaches the building, and it reminds him of coming home on nights after fights with Phil, being afraid of Phil being mad, but instead being welcomed in by a warm embrace. 

The door unlocks with a groan from a year of misuse, but it’s home. There's a slight stench in the air, but Dan supposes that it’s not unusual- there were plenty of dead animals in here after the spray. 

He walks up all of the flights, and his head pounds when he sees the carpet’s discoloration- Phil. He closes his eyes and swallows back bile, then steps in the lounge. He wants to cry when he sees the sticker covered laptop, because he misses Phil so fucking much. The entire flat is coated with a layer of dust, but Dan doesn’t ever want to leave. He wants to stay here, clean the flat, then beg for it back instead of moving somewhere else. 

Zoe giggles sadly as she sees the picture from Vidcon a few years back where nearly all of the well known British YouTubers were in a big group, Dan and Phil standing tallest in the back with Jim. 

He sees their bag of memory cards- thats the first thing that he grabs and shoves into his backpack. Then it’s the laptop and it’s charger, and their book, their ticket to TATINOF, that a viewer had sent in of the first show. Dan grabs plushies and books and photos, and a stray sock of Phil's. 

He goes to Phil’s room next. It’s haphazard from the wrestling he did with himself, but the whole room was so Phil. He grabs Phil’s clothes- all of them. He would get them sanitized later, but now he holds them close, smelling Phil. 

That’s what sends him to the floor, crying. He misses Phil so so much, and Zoe can see how ready he is to go and meet Phil in whatever afterlife he can find him in. 

Zoe leans down to comfort him, but he doesn’t notice. He’s so broken that it hurts to think of anything other than the one person that put him together in the first place. He begins to grab pictures around the room of everyone, no matter the importance. He was sure Martyn would love to see pictures of Phil and the rest of his family, just as he loved seeing Phil’s smiling face again. 

When Dan reaches his own room, there is an array of things that he knows he has to pack- clothes, his amber lamp, photos, his laptop, and Zoe doesn’t protest when he hands her a luggage tote, instead beginning to pack along side him. 

Then Dan sees it- the teenie-tiny kitten sticker on his piano. Gently, he peels it off and sticks in on the underside of his watch. (He needed everything of Phil he was allowed.) He grabs as many mementos that he could, hoping that he’d be able to clear the home and come back to live. 

The life in the house was still there, everything reminded Dan of life, because that was Phil. What he saw on Phil’s last night wasn’t Phil, because his Phil was still with him, emotionally. That mahogany stain on the carpet wasn’t Phil. Phil was still here, keeping life in the sad place. 

He takes Phil’s cologne from the bathroom before they leave, spraying some on the fabric of his watch. 

~  
Dan never ended up going back to Manchester or Wokingham.

When Dan was cleared to go back home, he was ecstatic. Zoe was cleared too- she was going to live in the apartment next door with Cat, who’d been stationed in London. 

Often Dan finds himself smiling at something that reminds him of Phil, or seeing a certain item that he can’t help but giggle at, and that goes with crying too. 

He cries when reading or seeing something Phil had never showed him, and cries with Martyn who knows exactly what the brown shadow is on the floor, which Dan eventually gets cleaned because it could have infection in it from the Infect, but it also wasn’t Phil. Not his Phil. 

Martyn and Cornelia’s baby is named Phillip, a cute little ginger boy that Dan loves so damn much. 

Dan gets along, just barely, but his hope is building itself up just as the new world has. He watches the continents join territories to create Mercy, a separated super-country, bound under a regiment law for each old country, going under the same ruling as before, but making decisions as a whole. Dan watches children grow up in a world that would never see that trauma for a long while, and he watches Phillip grow into a young boy that looks so much like Cornelia it’s not even funny.

But Dan watches a world go by without Phil, and Dan wishes Phil was beside him through all of it, to come home with him the day that he was cleared to wrap his arms around Dan’s waist and say; “Welcome home.”


End file.
